Taras Blubber

It was after a performance of Janacek's gutsy triptych of death Taras Bulba that I let slip to my friends in the audience my embarrassing condition. It's one that is shared by many other musicians and it's time to confront the stigma.



For despite our reputation for hard-nosed cynicism and lack of sentimentality, many of us are afflicted by an inclination to tearfulness at certain passages of music - and I mean real jerked tears of the most pathetic kind. It's not easy reading music through misty eyes (let alone the sheer indignity of it all) so you'd have thought it preferable to prevent it happening. But the only cure I know is to disengage from the music and go through the motions a little, robbing the performer of a uniquely intense experience. Damn you, music!

So now Taras Bulba - rather, a specific passage towards the end of the superb coda - can be added to my personal list of music to get all emotional about. This includes the end of Sibelius 2 (another coda); a 2-bar passage in Sibelius 4 (in which dread turns to hope which turns to rapture which ebbs away to desolation. 2 bars!); the end of the 1st movement of Brahms 4 (another coda!); the insane fugue in Shostakovich 4; 'Erbame dich' from Bach's St Matthew Passion.

My list could go on. But it's time for others to fess up. What's guaranteed to get your ducts to water?

Truly unbelievable

Check out this story about a £560,000 hole in the LPO's accounts. The industry can do without these characters, and there is a worrying string of these stories this year, with the alleged fraud perpetrated against the King's Music website, and Peter Maxwell Davies's agent making off with a similar sum in the approach to the composer's 75th birthday.
Equally we can do without the Evening Standard claiming the Star Wars soundtrack as one of the LPO's big successes. I mean, they have almost certainly recorded it at some point, but you don't mess with the LSO on this one:

Seminal, fluid piano

All hail the freely-tempered and hairy-armed Geoff Smith, who has battled what he describes as 'complacency, conservatism and cultural prejudice' to get the backing to develop his fluid piano. Well done Smith, the Guardian, and, we have to say, us, for getting it out there. Watch this space.

Omnes una manet Knox

It's tough, learning to play contemporary music, so those who make it a specialism are tough people. All of which clearly makes Garth Knox - for 8 years the viola player with the Arditti Quartet, former member of Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain, and collaborator as a soloist with contemporary composers both well-known and not - some kind of muscled brute.

But Knox is not one to keep it all to himself. As well as his diverse teaching and performing activies (which include work in dance and theatre projects), he is also the composer of Viola Spaces, a set of studies whose admirable aim is to give students a way of practising contemporary techniques. You never know, I may even get hold of a copy myself.

Anyway, on his website Knox gives some sample performances of the studies. Here's a good one:



You can also watch him (or is it John Malkovich?), together with 3 fresh-faced apostles, run through his version of Marin Marais's Les Folies d'Espagne in which each variation demonstrates one of the techniques practised in the studies.

As I said, it's tough learning to play contemporary music. But Knox's website makes it easy to create your own contemporary viola masterpiece simply by playing the examples simultaneously. I recommend setting off the Marais variations first, then turning on the studies ad libitum to create a veritable palimpsest of viola sounds.

World Barlines Day: 19 November

Classic FM has announced the first-ever ‘national listening day’. It is being held in association with the RPS’s Hear Here!, which they style 'the first classical music project dedicated to listening’.
Two bold 'firsts', the second of which, I am certain, is the most outrageous lie since Handel told Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni that he had two penises (Barlines Top five UK listening projects explicitly dedicated to Classical Music found after a cursory Google search: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).
But the first 'first' is a different matter. Although national governments are the only bodies that can nominate a proper national holiday, anyone can nominate a themed day and stick the word ‘National’ or even the word ‘World’ on it, and institutions from the smallest charity up to the United Nations do just that. Normally they are either in the spirit of fun (Talk like a Pirate Day, International Day of Slayer etc) or they are organised in order to raise awareness, such as World Aids Day, National Stress Awareness day, Carers Rights Day etc. If there is fundraising involved it tends to be for an extremely good cause, such as the British Legion selling poppies prior to Remembrance Sunday.
It is unheard of that a commercial organisation will be asked to create a national day for its own gain. The RPS asking Classic FM to host a national listening day is a bit like the Royal Society of Medicine inviting Cadbury to sell mini rolls in aid of the first-ever ‘Eat Mini Rolls Day’.
If it is this easy we want in on the game. Barlines wants its own day. National Listen to Classic FM Plug Itself Day, or whatever it’s called, is on Tuesday 17 November. We can’t choose anything on the following weekend, because the Saturday is No Music Day, and the Sunday is St Cecilia’s Day. We propose something on the Thursday, with a slightly more liberal remit. How about the first-ever 'World Smelling day, on which you are allowed to play a Bit of Music'?. How about it? The first-ever classical music project dedicated to smelling! 19 November, remember the date. Tell us what you smelled! And what you listened to while you were doing it!

Britten OWNS Richter

Watch Benjamin Britten mess with the best pianist in the world! This will never get old - the mischievous smile, the sweat pouring off Sviatoslav Richter's brow...

Magnifico

Are they allowed to do that? If not, we're probably definitely not allowed to do this: